Category: Finnish Cinema

The Leeds International Festival Catalogue describes this as an ‘essay film, rather than a documentary. This places the film in that cinematic discourse best represented by the masterworks of Chris Marker. Like those it offers a studied ambiguity that can and should stimulate the viewer’s thoughts as well as their emotions. It combines recently discovered archive footage covering wars of decolonisation in Africa from the 1960s through to the 1990s accompanied by quotation from Franz Fanon’s seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth. What follows is a short response to a complex film and I plan to return with a longer engagement on the Third Cinema Revisited Blog.

The film is divided into ‘Nine scenes from the anti-imperialist self-defence’. In the course of the film we see many sequences of the white settlers in various occupied territories, mainly lording it over the oppressed and exploited black natives. We also see various conflicts between National Liberation Movements and the colonial armies. There is extensive coverage of the struggles in what has become Angola. Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Each sequence also presents quotations from the Fanon’s book. This provides comment, analysis and ironic counterpoint to the comments of the white settlers, the colonial military, and the predominantly western journalist covering events. There are also extensive interviews with and comments by black natives, including those involved in the armed struggle. Refreshingly there is much screen space given to women, both as part of the exploited indigenous people but also as participants in the armed struggle.

Notably we also hear readings from the writings of Amilcar Cabral [Guinea Bissau] and an interview with Tomas Sankara [Burkino Faso]. There is also an interview with Robert Mugabe from the early days after the ZANU-PF victory. Whilst there are many male voices on the soundtrack the frequent quotations are read by an Afro-American woman, Lauryn Hill.

Most of the footage was shot in 1.37:1, some in colour, and some in black and white. But the opening and closing sequences are in 1.85:1 and the footage in the older ratio is on a DCP, letter-boxed within this frame. There is also extensive use of music, both diegetic and non-diegetic. Unfortunately, [as in common in foreign language documentary] the songs are generally not translated in subtitles. There are a number of scenes of violence and horrific wounds: also of colonial atrocities.

The Director, Göran Hugo Olsson, is quoted in the Catalogue:

When you see these films today you are struck by how biased they were, and how the filmmakers were totally lost in their political views. The use of older archive material reveals perspectives and prejudices that are clear, enabling viewers to see beyond them.

I was impressed by the film. The selection of material, and especially the way that it is edited into a coherent and very effective arguments is finely done. It works well both as a film and as propaganda [expressing complex ideas supporting the movement]. One caveat that I had was that the film has added an introduction by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a writer regularly included in anthologies of ‘post-colonial’ writings: [neo-colonial would be more accurate]. She places the work of Franz Fanon with a short biopic of his life and work. She correctly rejects the notion that he popularised support for violence: the colonized must, of necessity, use violence because of ‘the absolute non-response‘ of the colonisers.

She also makes the point that Fanon’s ideas, many of them developed in the historic liberation struggle by the Algerians against the French occupation, need developing in the present day and situation. However I think she offers only a partial account of Fanon’s politics in The Wretched of the Earth. Moreover, I think her opening remarks offer a reading of the film which is not borne out. She comments on gender and appears to suggest that ‘violence against women’ is committed both by the colonial movement and the anti-colonial movements. But the film depicts armed women who state, “We are on the same level as men.” The film does undercut some of Fanon’s reliance on male nouns and adjectives when passages are read over images of armed women fighters. But also note that he writes:

In an under-developed country every effort is made to mobilize men and women as quickly as possible; it must guard against the danger of perpetuating feudal tradition which holds sacred the superiority of the masculine element over the feminine. Women will have exactly the same place as men, not in the clauses of the constitution but in the life of every day: in the factory, at school and in the parliament.

And both images and quotations undercut the values expanded by the colonialists.

I think Spivak also overlooks the centrality of class in Fanon’s work. But this seems to me something that is at least underdeveloped in the film, especially in the Conclusion where we hear Fanon’s maxims for the future of the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist revolution. Fanon writes about the class forces in play after the end of direct occupation: a quotation from these comments would have made sense of the situation of Mugabe and Zimbabwe.

The quotations from Fanon are brief, mainly single sentences. Some the context of his position is often lost. This is the case when the film makes the point that the colonised black people use violence against their own: but Fanon is writing about the situation of the native under colonialism and before the development of an anti-colonial consciousness. One hopes that the film will stimulate viewers to read Fanon’s book – though I fear many may believe they have been provided with a sufficient grasp of his thought. The film’s title and focus is on one aspect of Fanon’s book, violence: this is where The Wretched of the Earth commences, but it goes a long way beyond this.

Even so this is a film that is unlikely to leave you unmoved and should certainly stimulate you. The audience at the Hyde Park Picture House showed their response with applause at the film’s end. This is definitely a film to see. It is getting a UK distribution [probably limited] by Dogwoof. I hoped to see it again, and did, [see http://thirdcinema.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/concerning-violence-with-a-q-a/].

Le Havre is the third of a trio of top films at Cannes in 2011 to arrive in the UK over the last couple of months – or perhaps the fourth if you include This Is Not a Film alongside Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and The Kid with a Bike. It’s annoying that we have to wait so long – and that we have to sit through months of Hollywood ‘awards’ films before we get to the good stuff. Some of us would cheer a distributor who brought out films like these in January/February.

Aki Kaurismäki is an unusual filmmaker. A Finn now domiciled in Portugal, here he turns up with a film set in the major French port of Le Havre and funded by French and German film and TV companies plus Finnish public investment. Kaurismäki has made a film in French before but this one appears to be the first of a new trilogy he hopes to make in various European ports. I’m something of a newcomer to his films but the two I have seen have shared a number of elements that I understand are quite common across his work. His films tend to feature working-class communities and dockside is a familiar destination. These are genuine ‘communities’ in which people look out for each other and especially when some official policy initiative threatens someone in the community. Kaurismäki prefers to create an imaginary world that is presented as if it were in a 1950s/60s/70s movie. So, not only do the cars, clothes, music etc. signal ‘pastness’ but also the use of studio sets alongside selected locations – and the sets are photographed according to the lighting and camera conventions of that period. The music too must fit this time period. The overall effect is a warm humanism cut with dry wit. Kaurismäki is himself a cinephile and there are numerous references to other auteur filmmakers, some directly but others in more diffuse ways.

In Le Havre the central character is Marcel Marx who lives with his wife Arletty and his dog Laika. Max somehow survives as a shoeshine man (since in this world, men still have leather shoes). Max befriends a young boy from Gabon who is hanging around the docks after the immigration police raid the shipping container in which he and a large group of ‘illegals’ have made the trip to France. The narrative then involves the attempt to get the boy to London to join his mother. In this Max calls on the whole local community of shopkeepers, bar-owners and local workers. In the meantime, Arletty has been taken to hospital with stomach pains.

The film looks wonderful (thanks to Kaurismäki’s long-time collaborator Timo Salminen). The look invokes several of my favourite directors. At one point it feels like a Truffaut film – and then up pops Jean-Pierre Léaud. There is also a beautiful shot of a tree in blossom that could be from Ozu. But the strongest connections are to the ‘poetic realist’ films of late 1930s French cinema, signified by the name Arletty and the location. Coincidentally, the BFI have just released a restored version of Le quai des brumes in which Jean Gabin is a soldier hoping to create a new life abroad after he migrates from Le Havre – but he becomes embroiled in a local dispute when he tries to save a young woman. Kaurismäki confirms the links to such films by playing various chansons on the soundtrack. One other reference that has been picked up is to the films noirs of Jean-Pierre Melville in which there are often distinct relationships between the dogged police detective and the romantic anti-hero. In Kaurismäki’s film Marcel has several crucial encounters with Inspector Monet.

Le Havre is the perfect length and if, as a viewer, you allow yourself to be taken into this imagined world you should spend a relaxing and heart-warming 93 mins. I’ve seen the complaint that the boy is too appealing and that the theme is somehow too ‘politically correct’, but I’m impressed by the director’s firm control over his material and I had no problems whatsoever with the film’s approach.

This remarkable film is a good example of what some film theorists have called the ‘national popular’ film. By that I mean a film that explores an important national event, is made by a local production company and seen by a significant audience both in the cinema and subsequently on TV/DVD etc. ‘The Winter War’ was the relatively short and bloody war in which Finland managed to stave off a Russian invasion in late 1939. The war ended in March 1940 with some Finnish territory ceded to the Soviet Union. Technically this was a victory for the Soviet Union but Finland remained independent and the Finnish forces proved a match for a much larger Red Army that suffered casualties on a 4:1 basis, arguably because of poor leadership and misguided strategic and tactical decisions. (The ‘Continuation War’ started in June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union when Finnish forces attempted to win back territory, this time with German support.)

The Winter War was the most expensive Finnish film production to date in 1989 and it isn’t hard to see where the money went with many extras and scenes of destruction. The PAL Region 2 DVD available in the UK from Scanbox Entertainment offers quite a poor transfer of what I assume was the original print in the European aspect ratio of 1.66:1 – which makes the film seem much older than 1989. The DVD runtime is just over 120 mins which means it offers only two-thirds of the original running time. The Finnish PAL Region 0 DVD runs to over three hours. I found my copy in my local library but if I’d known about the original version I’d have gone for that (it seems to be easily available in the UK). Because I’ve only seen the shortened version, I’ve got be wary in commenting on the narrative – which not surprisingly seemed to be somewhat elliptical!

Director and co-writer Pekka Parikka adapted a novel by Antti Tuuri focusing on a Finnish regiment that is quickly recruited and armed and sent to the front in the Karelian peninsula (strategically the most important target for the Russians as the original border was relatively close to Leningrad). Here the Finns are eventually forced to defend the rudimentary ‘Mannerheim Line’ of trenches against a large Soviet force. The Finnish forces comprise some grizzled veterans alongside a larger proportion of young recruits. They have makeshift uniforms and a motley array of light weapons. The Russians have all the tanks and aircraft and far more artillery. The Finns know what they are doing and they are at least camouflaged by their white capes and outer tunics. In the truncated version of the film, the major achievement is the representation of war as brutal and relentless. The Russian tactics were stupid with massed infantry walking towards the trenches alongside the tanks. Hundreds were shot and killed by the defenders but nevertheless we understand the terror of the defenders faced with successive waves of attackers. The film is remarkable for two absences. We have no access to the Russian perspective so they remain a faceless enemy apart from a few individuals killed or captured at close quarters. There is no representation of Finnish politicians or senior military figures and apart from one speech by a senior officer to his men there is relatively little jingoism. The Home Front focus is on the young wives and girlfriends and the mothers. Because the frontline was so close to home, some of the men get leave – but as one of them says the likelihood is they will go home in a box.

Perhaps because the narrative features an older brother looking after his sibling, several American commentators have compared the film favourably to Saving Private Ryan, suggesting that Spielberg might have seen it. I can’t comment on that except to say that the Finnish film is mercifully free of the sentimentality that too often overwhelms Spielberg’s films. For me the Hollywood films that this reminded me of were those combat films about WWII and Korea made by Sam Fuller and Robert Aldrich – and of course, Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. But then the real comparison might be with Russian films about the ‘Great Patriotic War’.

So, despite the truncated narrative, I’m glad I’ve seen this – it helps to explain some of the background to those Nordic crime fiction and horror stories I’ve been reading in which Danes, Swedes and Norwegians are fighting as volunteers alongside the Finns and against the Russians in 1939.

Like this:

Could this be the first book I’ve bought that I can’t review? Perhaps you, the reader, should decide. We’ve reviewed two other entries from this Wallflower series, but this collection of essays on Scandinavian films presents me with an unusual problem – I haven’t seen any of the 24 films selected as case studies. Now I admit that my specific interest in ‘Nordic Cinema’ is fairly recent but my experience of Swedish and Danish Cinema over the years is not too bad. I don’t think that it is just me – the brave editor of this collection has decided to go for a much wider perspective on regional cinema than I have seen elsewhere in the series.

The selection of 24 titles spans 1905 to 2004 and begins with ‘actualité‘ footage of the arrival of the King of Norway at Christiania (Oslo) in 1905 at the moment of Norwegian independence and the founding of the nation state. Elsewhere in the selection we find three advertising films, two of them by leading filmmakers from Sweden, Ingmar Bergman and Roy Andersson, and two of the sex films made in the 1960s, one from Sweden and one from Denmark (intriguingly categorised as a ‘happy porn’ film). There are two documentaries (one of which is the extremely successful 2001 film about a Norwegian choir, known internationally as Cool and Crazy) and a children’s film Elvis, Elvis (Sweden 1977). And would you expect The Wake (Denmark 2000) to be 462 minutes of art installation work? The selections do span 100 years but it’s noticeable that seven of the films date from the period 1945-55, more than any other ten-year period – and there are some periods that are not represented at all (e.g. 1956-68). As for the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway are represented roughly equally but Sweden has nearly twice as many entries. There is no selection representing Iceland. And just in case you were wondering, besides Bergman and Andersson there are films from other internationally-known auteurs such as Carl Dreyer, Aki Kaurismaki and Lars Von Trier.

The reason I bought the book was because I needed a general introduction to Nordic Cinema and there is only this or the Routledge National Cinema series entry available at the moment. When I first realised that I hadn’t seen any of the films, my first reaction was very negative, but now that I think about it, there is still plenty to learn from the guide. All the authors except one are based at universities in Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark and this may partly explain the selections since presumably they have better access to the older films than most audiences outside the region. I’m not sure what to make of the exclusion of Iceland. In her introduction Tytti Soila explains that Iceland produced very few films before the late 1970s and that Icelandic film culture has had a tendency to look more towards Anglo-Saxon culture. It still seems a shame though that there isn’t one entry. (The introduction also points out that as well as the similarities which help the Nordic identity to be meaningful, there are also significant differences between each of the five countries.)

Soila’s introduction sets out the reasons for the approach to selection and the conscious attempt to avoid the “list of canonised feature films that the cultural industries, as well as literature abroad, usually present as ‘interesting’ or ‘culturally valuable’ or , even worse, ‘typical for Scandinavia'”. Thus the attempt to have a serious look at the porn films which helped several smaller companies stay in business at a time of crisis, at the folksy comedies and at the children’s films, advertising films and documentaries. The introduction is extremely useful and I hope that I can learn from the approach adopted in the chapters, even though I haven’t seen the film being discussed. It some cases I have seen other films by the same director or similar films by other directors. I should add that many of Roy Andersson’s other TV commercials are available on YouTube and very funny they are. I don’t think I can hold the editor of this collection responsible for the fact that most of these films are not available in the UK so having waited several months for Amazon to find me a copy I’m just going to read it and get the most from it that I can.

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At a time when the number of films directed by women has become a major issue in the anglophone world, it’s worth noting that in France things have moved on considerably. In a review of Mon Roi (2015) by the actor-director Maïwenn (Sight & Sound, July 2016), Ginette Vincendeau makes the point that currently over … Continue reading →

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